Anthony Chesler: About one third of all clothing that gets manufactured goes from factory to landfill. You just see the posture and the demeanor of someone who comes in and how they leave our experiences. And it's really inspiring to know that clothing can have such an impact on people's lives. We talk about clothing being the forgotten basic human right.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to Add to Cart, the podcast that Express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of E commerce. Every month, Nathan Bush from 12 High and an E commerce industry expert will share the news, research and insights that you need to know to keep you at the top of your game and of course, keep your customers Adding to Cart
Nathan Bush: hello and welcome to Add to Cart. My name is Nathan Bush, host of Add to Cart and director at E Commerce talent Agency E Suite. My guest today actually had to reschedule because he got sick after helping flood victims get back on their feet. I think that gives you an idea of the type of person that we're working with here. Joining me today is Anthony Chesler, the CEO of Thread Together. Thread Together aimed to drive social and environmental change by connecting excess retail clothing
Nathan Bush: with people who need it most.
Nathan Bush: Whether these people are impacted by floods, bushfires, domestic violence, homelessness, their asylum seekers leaving jail, or even impacted by Covid, Anthony and his team give these people dignity through the power of clothing. And so far, the response from the retail community has been incredible, with giving from the likes of Surf Stitch, the iconic PE Nation, Beckon Bridge, Under Armour and Afterpay all ongoing. However, there's lots more work to be done. In this episode, Anthony shares how Thread Together are making real change, how we in retail can get involved in and how we can bring our customers along on the journey as well. So thanks to our partners Shopify plus and Signet, here's a conversation with Anthony
Nathan Bush: Chesler from Thread Together. Anthony Chesler, welcome to Add to Cart.
Anthony Chesler: It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the opportunity.
Nathan Bush: Pleasure for our listeners. We've actually had to reschedule this and we had to go again because you lost your voice last week.
Anthony Chesler: I'm pleased to have it back. Lots going on. So we're running pretty hard at the moment, but yeah, it's really, really exciting to be here.
Nathan Bush: Awesome.
Nathan Bush: And in terms of running pretty hard, what's taking your time right now with Thread Together?
Anthony Chesler: It's amazing. Like the beginning, end of 2019, you know, or middle of 2019, we were stuck with bushfires and that moved straight into Covid and we thought the start of 2021 would be an opportunity to Reset. And So that's how 2021 started for us. And then we've had this huge flood on the mid north coast of New South Wales and that's really put us back into sort of fifth gear in terms of responding. So we're super busy at the moment meeting the need out in the community.
Nathan Bush: Okay, so with Thread Together, can you
Nathan Bush: connect the dots for us and explain
Nathan Bush: how Thread Together works with retailers and the community to bring both together?
Anthony Chesler: Absolutely. Thread Together is Australia's highest ethical response to fashion access. We partner with hundreds and hundreds of fashion brands, retailers all around the country, and we're a solution to a problem that they have around product at end of line or end of life. So end of season, what does a store do with clothing that they haven't managed to sell or sell through various channels? We're a solution to that problem and we're going to collect that product in whatever quantity, in whatever size range, and redistribute it to vulnerable people in the community. And so we really are working with, as I said, hundreds of fashion brands all around the country to collect clothing that would otherwise go to landfill, which is really sad. And to redistribute that clothing through a network of registered charities and social service agencies. And we do that, and it's only made possible through the support of amazing fashion brands and an engaged group of volunteers.
Nathan Bush: And how big is or was that problem of getting rid of end of season, end of stock fashion?
Anthony Chesler: There's a lot of material out there which is trying to define the quantum of excess. We believe not for every retailer, but about one third of all clothing that gets manufactured goes from factory to landfill. So a significant number that's obviously coming down as brands are becoming much more conscious, but as a result of things like fast fashion, you know, low barriers to entry, you know, it's easy to manufacture and cost to manufacture is much lower. And as a result, brands are manufacturing more clothing and selling it at various different price points. What that means is a lot of that clothing doesn't get sold and there's nothing wrong with it, it's perfectly new. And yeah. So that problem is large and it continues to be.
Nathan Bush: And does that problem also exist for returns?
Anthony Chesler: Absolutely. Like we get a lot of returns from a lot of the major retailers. The product comes, goes through a return process. If it's above or below a certain dollar value, the e tailer or the retailer makes an assessment and then makes that donation to us.
Nathan Bush: Cool. So how does it actually work? So if I'm a retailer, I'VE got end of season goods sitting in my warehouse and I go, I need to make room here. These are either going to landfill or I've heard about this incredible organization thread together. Do they call someone to pick it up? Do they send it somewhere?
Anthony Chesler: Yeah. So we, we've created a frictionless marketplace. If you think about us as like a B2B. The sources of supply of our product come from these fashion brands all around the country. They simply get in touch with us and provide us with five key data points that allow us to arrange the collection. So we save a retailer the cost of holding that product in their warehouse or with a third party logistics provide. We save them the cost of freight to get it to us and any disposal costs that they may incur. Those would be what I would call the hard cost that we save them and we arrange to go and collect that. So we simply need to know where are we collecting the product from and how many cartons or pallets that we collect. We then arrange to send them the consignment note and the manifest. They label the cartons or pallets and the magic makes its way back to our center. We run a centralized distribution model, so we distribute nationally, all around the country. And I'll talk to you about those channels in a moment. But yeah, the product comes back here, but it doesn't always come back to us the way in which it arrives in a store. So we might receive a box, it might be the size of a spa bath. It might have menswear, women's wear, shoes, accessories. And so we're really reliant on a network of volunteers to help us to sort the clothing into categories and sizes in order to enable us already us to be able to distribute that to people in need. And that clothing comes to us every single day. So we receive clothing, menswear, women's wear, children wear, return to work wear, formal wear, shoes. I said it's shoes, accessories and apparel.
Nathan Bush: But it's all brand new stuff.
Anthony Chesler: It's all brand new, it's all tagged, it's all ready to be redistributed. Most of it's still sitting in a polypropylene bag with the price tag on. In some cases, we even receive some product with the security tag. So we have to remove the security tag before we redistribute it. And we've intentionally made the model frictionless. We know one of the biggest barriers to retailers with regards to excess sock is what to do with it. And if we can take it off their hands and make it easy for them to donate it. The product comes to us, it comes every single day.
Nathan Bush: Lovely. And are you able to name some of the retailers that you're working with regularly?
Anthony Chesler: Yeah, sure. We're working with brands like Under Armour, Bendon. We have some beautiful product that comes from the iconic, both private label and some of the third party label. We're working with Surf Stitch, we're working with the Retail Apparel Group and all of their brands. So Connor, yd, Johnny, Big, Tara, Cash. Some of the women's brands include PE Nation. The girls there are amazing. They come in and volunteer here and they support us with clothing donations at different times of the year. Some of the more high end fashion comes from Beckon, Bridge, Camilla and Mark. So we really don't discriminate when, you know, when brands reach out to us. We work with very large, some very, very large brands and some very, very small boutique brands. We've just onboarded a new brand called Saturday. The label we're working with Nudie jeans, we're working with Levi's. All the sorts of brands that you would see in and around a typical retail experience. Their athlete's foot provide us sneakers and Bamboozle provide us socks.
Nathan Bush: It's amazing.
Anthony Chesler: Yeah, we get some am amazing donations and just recently with regards to the floods, the PVH group. So Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Van Hewson made an amazing donation to help us with flood relief at the moment, which has been outstanding.
Nathan Bush: When Australian fashion brand Age wanted to set up its international omnichannel presence, they wanted to focus on mobile intuitiveness and flexible payment types. And of course they turned to Shopify Plus. In just a few weeks after implementation, they saw their E commerce conversion rate soar by 135%. It's the stuff E commerce streams are made of. They also saw a reduction in bounce rate, increased pages per session and a longer session duration. Now they are ready to take on the world. To read more of Age's story and see other case studies, visit the customers section on shopify.com au forward/plus.
Nathan Bush: How do you then do the matchmaking between the stock that you receive and the communities who need it?
Anthony Chesler: Great, great question. So we have a network of registered charities and social service agencies. So people always ask us sort of who needs clothing and then how do you connect with those people? So the types of people that we're supporting are people that have lost their home through fire, damaged their house has been damaged through flood. Just recently they've been significantly impacted by the pandemic. They might be an Asylum seeker or refugee, a long term unemployed, a youth at risk, a victim of domestic violence, a man or woman who's been incarcerated and are leaving jail. And all of these individuals receive a wardrobe from us. A typical wardrobe is around 22 to 25 units of clothing. You know, people sort of say how you're clothing people. What does that really mean? We're providing wardrobes to people and we're giving them the choice of the selection of that wardrobe, which I'll explain to you, and how we're doing that. But the product comes to us and we've got to sort it into categories and sizes. And then there's four ways in which we get clothing out to people in need. The first is online. So we have an online e comm site which is powered by Shopify, an amazing platform that allows us to connect directly with our customer, which is a registered charity or a social service agency. They have access to our site, so it's exclusive use to them. And they will place an order on behalf of an individual. So a caseworker may be sitting with a vulnerable woman who's just arrived at a women's refuge and she will be able to place an order on us for whatever it is that she needs in whatever size. And so she gets to choose whether she wants activewear, casual wear, corporate wear, return to workwear, and we build a wardrobe for her online, or the case manager does that and simply checks out and we take care of the rest. Our volunteers will come here and they'll do order fulfillment. So they will push trolleys around our center and they will pick and pack and do a QA process and ready the product to be distributed. So that's the first channel and that allows us to distribute clothing all around the country. And those orders come into us every single day. The second channel in which we distribute clothing to people is what we call our mobile fleet of wardrobes. This is a custom fitted walk in wardrobe. An individual is. We drive those into our partner community sites. So again, we don't just turn up into the middle of the CBD and open up a wardrobe and invite people in. The reason being it's really about creating an opportunity for people to restore some dignity and have some choice and do that in the privacy of a particular location. And so we would drive into one of our community partners. So that might be, you know, in Woolloomooloo in Sydney, it could be in Diripoli in Brisbane, in St Kilda in Melbourne. And we will work with our partners. Our partner will tell us we need Clothing for either men, women or children or transgender, for example, and we will stock the wardrobe accordingly. The wardrobe has a change room on the rear of the vehicle which backs up and the vehicle drives in. It can clothe up to 50 to 60 individuals in a two to three hour activation. Today we've got our vehicles on the road, just left our centre to go to Newtown Neighborhood Centre. We're at Women and Girls Emergency Centre, which is a women's refuge. We're doing some work on Friday at a local sort of soup kitchen. And again we bring in. So we're on a sort of a rotation, the vehicles. There's 10 of those vehicles that are driving around the country at the moment. And again the partners explain to us what their community needs and we're bringing the clothing into that. So it could be jeans, T shirts, sneakers, socks and hoodies. If you're going into a homeless community, individuals can't carry too much, so you've got to really think about the clothing that goes into the vehicle. So that's the second channel to distribute, it's the mobile. The third is an exclusive retail experience for a vulnerable person. This is a retail store which is built for a person who's in need of clothing and we call it a clothing hub. And the individuals are given gift cards by our charity partners and social service agencies to come and access the service. The gift card doesn't have any value attached to it, it's just a more dignified term for a voucher or a referral individual will come to us and we will treat them like we would treat it, expect to be treated in any retail experience. They get to browse, try on, select the clothing that meets their style and their circumstance, and we simply package it up at a point of sale counter. But there's no exchange of funding because all of our clothing is given away at no cost to people in need. So that's the third. We call it the in store experience. And finally, something that we're piloting and looking at, rolling out, is putting what we call a modular wardrobe, which is just a small wardrobe, almost like a stationary cupboard, into organizations to meet people's needs at an immediate point in time. And so in South Australia, we're piloting this in a number of women's refuges. We will put a modular wardrobe in, so if a woman arrives in a very vulnerable state, she can access some sleepwear, some underwear, some bras, just something to restore some normalcy right at that point on arrival, then she can work with the caseworker to place an order online or receive a gift card to visit one of our stores. So those are the four.
Nathan Bush: That's amazing. You're more omnichannel than most retailers.
Anthony Chesler: Well, you know, it's important to, I think it's important to recognize that people that are vulnerable need to be met and you need to sort of walk alongside them and you need to create opportunities for them to feel empowered. We always, we talk about clothing being the forgotten, basic human right. People that are vulnerable will tend to look for food, security and shelter, but tend to wear the clothing that, that they have on their backs until it's completely deteriorated. And we see people coming to our service with nothing on their back, no shoes on, and it's really sad to see that, but we're really pleased to be able to meet that need where the need exists. You know, those people don't want to walk into a high street store not wearing anything, but we're able to meet them where they feel comfortable and empower them through clothing.
Nathan Bush: Is there any particular story with. Obviously not going into detail, but any particular story that's always stayed here with you around? The power of clothing to make such a difference in someone's life?
Anthony Chesler: Yeah, there's so many stories. It's almost like we, you know, we saw during the bushfires, you know, we heard some really horrific stories of people, you know, fighting back, staying back. A 74 year old gentleman who came into one of our clothing hubs to be reclothed, you know, had a super expensive wardrobe which he lost. And we heard the challenges that he had experienced trying to protect his home. And, you know, so the devastation, and not only do you hear it, but you see it. We met an individual, we were on the south coast last week who had, you know, fifth degree burns all over her body. She shared photographs with us. Her hands were sort of still almost like I had never seen anything in the flesh. And so you see people that have been traumatized by circumstance. We've opened our clothing hubs, we've had the police contact us and ask us to open our clothing hubs in the middle of night. Because we've had women arrive and they've arrived with battered and bruised and no clothing. And, you know, it's a lot. It's trauma. You're seeing trauma front. You know, when you, when you're doing outreach services and you're working with homeless people or you're working with asylum seekers or refugees, we're sending clothes into detention centers. You hear stories every single day about the lack of dignity that people have to not having access to clothing. And we always talk about, you know, if you are doing it tough, why would you want to be reminded of your circumstance by having to wear secondhand clothing? So we think that because there's so much excess, we can certainly make good use of that and create that. But we're clothing girls who wouldn't ordinarily be able to attend a school formal and celebrate finishing school. We're using some beautiful gowns from Beck and Bridge to do that. And we'll get some of the girls from Beckon Bridge to come and dress and style these girls and give them beautiful shoes and a clutch. And you just see the posture and the demeanor of someone who comes in and how they leave our experiences. It's really inspiring to know that, you know, clothing can have such an impact on people's lives.
Nathan Bush: You called it experiences there. And that's what it sounds like. It sounds like the impact is obviously the clothing to give people that fresh start and that feeling of, you know, I'm in a new place. But also that you've got people who actually care what clothes match that person. That's, you know, you mentioned dignity and it's such a strong, strong word.
Anthony Chesler: And everyone has, everyone's entitled to choice irrespective of their circumstance. And we wanted to create opportunity for people to have that choice. Like you and I both chose what we have fortunate enough to choose what we wore today. We opened up our wardrobes and maybe we might be a blue jeans and black or white T shirt kind of guy, it's easy to dress that way. But those. And we see it people who come to our mobile wardrobe experiences and we say, this is what we have to offer. And we say, well, today we've got white sneakers and black blue sneakers and people. You're empowering people through choice. And if you've only got white, you know, just because you've only got white doesn't mean people take it if they don't like it. You know, they demonstrate in that. And that's empowering, which is really important to create opportunities for people to feel empowered because that can move them out of their vulnerability.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely. You mentioned before that the Average wardrobe is 22 to 25 items. Where does that come from? From.
Anthony Chesler: It's just like we don't limit the number of units of clothing that an individual needs when we're delivering our service. So if someone comes into our, into one of our clothing hubs may just be after a new, you know, a new shirt and a tie to attend a Funeral. And so we would offer up, would you like a new pair of shoes and a pair of socks or a new pair of trousers? It's simply, it's driven by the data. At the end of the day, like we look at the data online, we look at the number of orders that are placed, the average units that are placed and that's how we come up with that number. We don't say, well a typical wardrobe encompasses 25 units, but you very quickly get to 25. So think about your house having burned down and you might need a pair of casual shoes, a pair of sneakers, you know, five or six pair of socks, five or six pairs of underwear and you're already at, you know, 15 or so items. Then you add a couple of pairs of jeans and some T shirts, jacket, a hoodie, you know, a scarf, a cap. You know, you very quickly at, you know, you very quickly add 25 to 30 units. And you know, we come from abundance, not scarcity. So we, there's no value to the clothing sitting in our warehouse and we've got warehouse full of clothing, beautiful brand new clothing and it actually costs us a lot of money to have that clothing sitting in the warehouse in that we can't bring more clothing in. So the quicker we can move it to people who need it and provide them exactly what they need is really important.
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Nathan Bush: Did I read recently that you just established a new warehouse to hold all of this?
Anthony Chesler: Yeah, absolutely. We were bursting at the seams. One of the other challenges that we had during COVID was a lot of clothing didn't get sold. And so amongst how we responded to Covid, which is interesting, we had to adapt slightly for Covid in our distribution channel in that a lot of our partners were not providing outreach services. So we created what we call a virtual gift card which was again just a token to allow an indivulnerable individual to access our Shopify instance and place an order directly with us. So effectively became a direct to consumer offering as a result of COVID And that came with quite a few challenges because you would Send out a pair of sneakers. And the individual might say, well, I'm actually a nine and a half and you've sent me a nine. Or these shoes are my nine and a half. And it caused some interesting challenges around, well, how do we manage returns? Because we're not geared up to do that and we don't have the infrastructure in place or the cost base to do that either. So that was particularly interesting. But what we found in Covid as well is because a lot of clothing didn't get sold, a lot of clothing was donated to us, and we're still starting to see the ripple or the lag of that as well. And so we are in an amazing new warehouse which has been subsidized by the Goodman foundation, who've been an outstanding partner of ours. We're in Banks Meadow in Sydney, just on the outskirts next to the airport. And we're in about a 2000, a little less than 2000 square meter facility. And we've come from about 250 to 300 square meters. So I come to work every hour and I can actually breathe and don't have to sort of hold my breath, which is really great. And we've had some amazing support from the Iconic to help us to actually best optimize the footprint of the warehouse and the picking towers that we have in place here. And yeah, we opened the center officially in February of this year. It was opened by the governor General and we had some amazing support from afterpay, one of our partners, Nick, was here and said a few words. We had some, you know, some fashion brands attend and it was a beautiful sort of morning to connect some of our charity partners, some of our volunteers, some of our fashion brands, and some of our people that are important to us that help us to do what we do. Like the Commonwealth bank have been amazing as well as a partner, and they create the ability to actually have this space which allows us to deliver our services efficiently and effectively.
Nathan Bush: That's brilliant. And working with the Iconic, was there anything when they're setting up, helping set up the warehouse, was there any tips or recommendations that they gave you around warehousing that really surprised you?
Anthony Chesler: You know what, it's quite interesting because during COVID so we have an amazing partnership with them and there's actually four things that they provide to us, which are the four things that we need, and they provide it in abundance. What they couldn't do last year was provide us a lot of, you know, face to face volunteers. And so they provide us a lot of talent. Remotely as a result of COVID And so they pretty much built the floor print of our warehouse for us. They looked at the space and the units and the turns of product skus and helped us understand how do we best optimize that space. And so they pretty much drew the warehouse out for us. The skills that we didn't have, they provided that talent to help us to deliver our service. And yeah, I come to work, I'm so proud to walk through the center. It's designed and built by the iconic. It's on a smaller scale to their fulfillment center, but it allows us to operate efficiently and effectively. We have a chaotic pick path which is something that they have, which allows us to do order fulfillment really, really seamlessly. So our volunteers can come in and access the clothing in the bin location that it's in and we can fill orders. I'd like to say same day, but sometimes we are a very small team and can't quite turn those orders same day. But yeah, we're grateful for, for the support that they've provided at our new center.
Nathan Bush: That's incredible. I can imagine. There's so much complexity.
Nathan Bush: I just want to go back being the nerd that I am to you
Nathan Bush: being on Shopify because I look at this from the outside and I go, geez, this is complex. Like you've got a lot of one off items. You've got sizing everywhere. You're connecting you. You're exactly like you said it, you're a Marketplace. You're connecting two different customers. Your B2B plus B2C. Why Shopify was like Shopify out of the box, easy enough for you to operate on.
Anthony Chesler: Yeah, it was, it was a very, very easy platform. So we, we were at this sort of juncture where we thought, how do we scale this operation and how, how do we do it in a way that it allows us to easily connect our customer, receive the information that we need and then distribute it in the same way that every other retailer or, or wholesaler or distributor or e tailer does. We needed a platform to allow us to receive orders. Just happen to be businesses as opposed to direct to consumer traditionally. And yeah, we did some due diligence at the time and this was the product that just allowed us to get up and running really quickly. That gave us the flexibility to manage the product set and it connects into all of our other platforms. So we're using a platform called Klaviyo which connects into Shopify. That helps us to nurture our charity brands in the same way that The Iconic nurtures their customers using their they're nurturing tools that helps us to keep relevance in front of mind of our customer and encourage them to continue to order. And it connects into HubSpot which we run sort of our E commerce pipeline, management order fulfillment through. But yeah, it's a great tool. Easy to use, easy for our customer to use. Most of our customers are shopping or have experience at shopping online, so we're emulating the same experience. The challenge that we have is that product comes to us in different categories and different sizes and you don't necessarily get all of the same SKU in the same size. How we manage that is we. It's very challenging to manage inventory, so inventory management is particularly challenging. We still haven't come up with the solution to manage inventory. It's less of an issue for us because we can visually see and know every day when we're filling orders. Are we running low on particular SKUs? And we have established partnerships so every one of our product is on a two by two matrix based on demand and supply. So under one, higher in demand and generally always low in supply. So you've got to go and build fashion partner networks with organizations like Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger and Bendon for example. And same with sleepwear. So we work with papanel and lots of sleepwear. So you know where the categories that are running low based on that matrix. Yeah. So then when product comes to us, we sort it into categories and sizes. So those are the only really two variables, variants. We don't run a color variant. And I'll explain to you how we accommodate for that. So simply we would sort shirts, it'd be a long sleeve shirt, a short sleeve shirt, a polo shirt, a T shirt, a tank top and then you'll have a hoodie, a jacket, a jumper, a suit and some knitwear. So your men's cad, your men's sort of wardrobe is quite simple and women's becomes a little bit more challenging because you might get a product that you're like, okay, it's a jumpsuit, is that a top or a bottom? Is it a. And you get, yeah. So it can be quite interesting to sort of manage some of variation that you do get. But it's quite simple. Like so women will have long sleeve tops and short sleeve tops and dresses and skirts and blouses and trousers and formal dresses and return to wear or corporate return to wear. Corporate wear. And the volunteers helping us to make the determination is that work wear, is that casual wear, is it activewear? Is it activewear? Bottom, active wear? Top activewear? Bra? Is it underwear? Is it. You know, is it bras? And so it's. It's not complicated. Where it does become complicated is where the customer has a specific need. So we do a lot of work with aged care. For example, individuals don't necessarily want. They would prefer elasticized bands as opposed to jeans. And so we've had to add a product category around tracksuit pants. Not something that we get a lot of, but we've created a category and often if it's not on the category, our client would email us and say, I'm working with the Muslim community. Could you please make sure that when you fulfill this order that you make sure. Sure that it's modest clothing, it's of a certain length and of a certain color. So individuals that are coming out of jail, if they're working with a caseworker, that individual may let us know. Please make sure that it's nothing that might trigger anything in particular. So sort of pretty basic. So again, we receive an email after the order's placed.
Nathan Bush: And I'm assuming you don't photograph every product for the website.
Anthony Chesler: We would love to. You know, being a very small team and being very reliant on volunteers, you do a variable workforce, and because it's variable, the quality of the delivery needs to be kept to the lowest common denominator. We don't know. We don't. We don't at the moment photograph all of our stock. So just. It's just a basic. A basic visual of a pair of underpants or a pair of jeans, a few different photographs, but it's. And we manage the expectation of the client when they're ordering. So the visual that you're looking at is not the visual that's going to be distributed to you. So we'll have blue jeans, black jeans, khaki jeans. We've got some amazing product from Nudie Jeans supporting some of the flood work that we're doing, but there's huge variation in cut and slim fit, and it's just too difficult at the moment. But as we become more sophisticated, Shopify is geared up to help us to do that as well.
Nathan Bush: Oh, it makes total sense as it would just be such a time suck right now.
Anthony Chesler: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Has there ever been any thought about a new revenue channel around some of those premium brands and creating a marketplace selling to the public where you can then use those funds?
Anthony Chesler: Yeah. So it's always been spoken about, but we can find a home for people in need, even for at that high end. And whilst it's not an obligation, we actually set the expectation with the brands that donate clothing to us that we don't commercialize the product in any way. So we don't want to do a $5 bag and walk through our center and fill it up with as a means of fundraising. We're a little bit unique in that we're not like most other charities who fundraise through a fundraising event, such as walking through a bag and trying to monetize or raise some funding through the sale of products. We don't write grants, for example. Everything that we do being a small team is we look at the return on the investment of the time and really trying to work with our network of partners and leveraging the network effect of their customers. So an amazing partnership with to pay, for example, and they help us to fundraise a point of sale through their engaged customer base. We do something similar. We did, we had an amazing campaign just recently with Tommy Hilfiger. So we're moving away from the traditional philanthropic sources of funding that traditional charities use. We're a registered charity. We have to fundraise. It's one of our biggest challenges to meet our operating costs to deliver our service, which is what you would the same cost that you would expect in any other retailer. So we have warehousing, we have logistics, we have freight, we have salaries and wages, packaging supplies, all the sorts of things that you'd expect to see. And we have to fundraise for that, you know. And so for as little as $5, we can provide a wardrobe, 22 to 25 units of clothing to someone in need. And so different fashion brands help us to fundraise. So Carla's And Patty provides $5 for every sale that they make online to us. PE Nation do something similar through the I, which we're very grateful to be a project on that. And retailers can nominate us as a project on that front. Some retailers have their own means in which to do that. I mentioned we did a giving campaign with Tommy Hilfiger last year that raised nearly $45,000 over a three week campaign which was outstanding. We're testing something, we're about to test something with an E tailer around returns here. The consumer can actually, rather than receive a full credit for the return that they're refund, they can elect to receive that lesser small donation.
Nathan Bush: That's right.
Anthony Chesler: So we're looking at different ways. We have a fashion brand that has made a sock for us and for every sale of that sock, they make a $5 donation to throw together that provides a wardrobe to someone in need.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And I love that.
Nathan Bush: Even though there's raising money involved, raising money isn't the objective. The objective is getting clothing on people who need that.
Anthony Chesler: Yeah. And that's where we're super. We don't have the time to run an event or write grants because we're so focused on receiving clothing, saving it from going to landfill and giving it to people who need it most.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. And I was just going to mention in there that if anyone is interested, and I'm loving seeing a lot of these conversations starting to merge together, we had Jeremy from Iacles Change on Before Christmas, I think. So if anyone's interested in what they're doing, potentially bringing it all together, go check out his episode. Now, we've mentioned a few ways retailers can get involved and I'm sure retailers listening to this are now going, God, this is something I can help, I can contribute to. I can help. Anthony, I know you've got a way of wrapping this up into the four T's of how retailers can help. Can you talk us through those four T's and which are most important to you right now?
Anthony Chesler: Yeah, absolutely. So we try to keep things really simple here. We talk about we need four things to help us to deliver our services. The first T is time. And retailers, what we're seeing are increasingly wanting to get involved in helping us to deliver our service. So they'll provide stylists and makeup artists and others join us in our clothing hubs to work with vulnerable people. They'll give their teams time to come and volunteer with us. So we've just recently had a team from the Athlete's Foot here. We've got tomorrow, the team from afterpay will actually be here. We've had fashion brands from the iconic team are always here and so they're giving up of their time to come and help us. That's the first T. And that could be to drive our vehicles out into outreach, working in our retail stores or in our fulfillment center. The second T is talent. We've got a very small. We're a very small team with very high ambitions. We've got a strategic plan and four goals that we're trying to achieve and we need help to achieve those goals. We've had one of our partners has actually done some data analysis for us. They've given us the talent to help us to identify who are the next hundred agencies within a 3, 5 and 7 kilometer radius of certain postcodes so that we can Go and target an onboarding. So it's like almost a customer acquisition strategy through data driven analysis. So that's talent as an example. I spoke earlier about the talent that was provided by the Iconic. Really, really important to help us to achieve what we're trying to achieve. We either don't have the capacity or the capability, so we rely on our retailers to help us with that footprint. The third T, which I'm really excited about is the ties or introductions or connections. And being small, we rely on the network effect of our partners to communicate to others. So we're looking to onboard customers or charities and social service agencies. So we rely on those that are on board to talk to others and on the retailer side, which is really, really important. Like we always have gaps in our product categories. We may be short on socks at a particular time, we may be short on kids wear, which is where we are at the moment. Or for example, men's jeans. There's been an influx of need for men's jeans at the moment and so partners like the Iconic and others will introduce us to new brands. Like, we've just onboarded Nudie Jeans. They've made an amazing donation to support us on the flood floods and we've onboarded Levi's who've made a donation. Those came through introductions or connections or ties that were made by different fashion partners. We've onboarded to Cuba through a relationship so brands. And because it's so easy to onboard and access our service or be a solution to that problem, the ties really are easy to make those introductions. So we're always looking for people to come on board on both sides of our marketplace place or introduce us to others. And the last T, which is probably the one that keeps me up the most at night, is the Treasure Being, as I mentioned before, being a registered charity, we fundraise to cover our costs. And so we're very reliant on philanthropy to help us to do so. And what we're seeing from retailers is they're wanting to do more than just donate clothing to us. So they are coming to a very strong realization of the importance to connect to community or work with their customer, demonstrate to their customer base that they're not just, you know, got a section on their website that says that they have a sustainable line of product, but they're actually, you know, ethically manufactured, but they're actually contributing back into community. And if you can make it easy for fashion brands to contribute in a way, we find that they are happy to do so. So we're looking for brands to help us to raise 5,000. That helps us to close, you know, almost two and a half thousand people at $5. Sorry, 25,000 at $5 a person and $5,000 in fundraising. Some brands look at that and go, oh, that's really, really challenging. And others look at this and go, yep, we can do this. And we don't levy. We don't ask people to pay us for our service to be delivered. We don't charge an admin fee or collection fee or a redistribution fee in our brands don't pay for that service and they can't afford to. It's a point of friction. We couldn't get clothing to people if we said, hey, you've got to pay for the freight to get it to us. And so brands that are helping us to do that, some are blowing the lights out and some are doing it through matching. So they might say to their customers, you contribute $5 and we'll contribute $5, you contribute a dollar and we'll match that. And we've got lots of ideas. And so some people are doing a percentage proceeds of sales on a particular day. We did a campaign with Beck and Bridge recently where they did something similar around giving Tuesday. We're always looking for brands to do something. Our dream would be to have a calendar of events where fashion brands were helping us to fundraise in their own way and connecting to community. We've got lots of content to share. We've got a lot of value to bring back into those brands. It's not just about taking, it's about giving back. And the same applies for ourselves. Ultimately, we think the community consumer has a responsibility to contribute back. And so we don't only see it as the retailer. It'd be nice if the retailer matched that. But we want to create opportunities for the consumer to give. And if retailers can help us to do that, that'd make my life a lot easier.
Nathan Bush: And what we saw last year too is in backlash to a lot of the big promotional periods around Black Friday. And that is that instead of running sales, we saw some brands actually running charity promotions. So it was an opportunity that, hey, we're not going to go on sale, but we're going to donate X from each sale.
Anthony Chesler: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: As a way of giving back.
Anthony Chesler: Yeah. We had a brand who, instead of giving their influencers product, made a donation to them on, made a donation to us on their behalf and they sent out a beautiful card and we contributed to the content in that card, which was very personal and it Explained that whilst we'd love to give you product and it's more important that we support community. And I think, like, I feel like there's this. Almost like there's this undercurrent. And I think we're now creating a movement and there's definitely a movement around brands recognizing the importance of contribution back to community. And just, they're just looking for ways in which to do that and to do that to make that possible. And I think we certainly don't have all the answers like we're looking at, you know, some apps within Shopify that make it easy for customers at checkout to fundraise that don't want to use an existing, existing platform. But yeah, we open. We'd love to talk to fashion brands who are wanting to help us. You know, we need all the help that we can to do this.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. So just recapping those four T's for you. From what I've heard, we've got time, we've got talent, we've got ties, and we've got treasure. So if you're a retailer who can help out in any of those ways, what's the best way to get in touch with you or your team?
Anthony Chesler: So I'll leave my personal contact details and phone number in the show notes. I'm happy to talk to anyone who'd like to do so they can reach us also@communicationsreadtogether.org, which I'll share those details in the show notes as well. And yeah, as I said, our model is frictionless. We would love to be the umbrella organization to the problem that fashion has around excess. And we're starting to do some really cool stuff which we can talk about maybe at another time around. What do we do with product that we haven't been able to do, distribute, and how do we make sure that that stays in circulation and doesn't make its way to landfill? So we're piloting some pretty interesting. We're doing some pretty interesting stuff at the moment, which it's in pilot stage. So I don't want to sort of say we're actually sort of in delivery, but it could potentially be a way in which to drive financial sustainability into our model by, you know, decommissioning and repurposing garments. But maybe that's a chat for another day.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, let's do it. Let's have another chat. Because I think that's the thing today. We've talked a lot about social and community and dignity and what clothes can do for people. We didn't really even touch much on the environmental impact that you're having, so I think there's a whole other side to unpack. I'm really excited to do that when you've got that up and running. So thank you very much for joining me, Anthony. You know, we just love what you're doing and what your team's doing, making such an impact and just keep doing it and hopefully we can get out there and support you as a retail community.
Anthony Chesler: Thank you, thank you for the opportunity to talk to you today, Nathan.
Nathan Bush: It's an incredible organization and one that I think is really easy to contribute to as a retailer. I really liked Anthony's four T's Time, Talent, Ties and Treasure. He's made it incredibly clear of the ask that he's making of the retail community and made it easy for those to get involved. I really hope that those who can maybe choose one or two of those T's reach out to Anthony and get involved. The other lesson here is that whether it's your customer or your investor wrapping up your ask in those really simple but direct messages like the four T's can get great cut through. Anthony's done that so well. Now before I go, I want to give a shout out to nat Hinser from Mr. Poolman who has won the six month stone and Wood subscription for her response to our question on her favorite Stonewood brew. She chose Stone and Wood's old favorite Pacific Ale and these are her words as it always brings me back to good times. Late night beach strolls, early morning service, morning mate, another beautiful day, passing comments to familiar faces on the sidewalk, long mermaid to coolie skates cafe breakfast, hole in the wall bar drinks and fellow go getters in the dark digital space. And that's only part of her response. Well deserved and enjoying that we know you will. To finish up, I have three resources for you. Firstly, if you're a first time listener about to cut and you want to stay up to date with new episodes, head over to addtocart.com and you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll let you know every time a new episode drops as well as giving you my three takeaways from each episode and a link to the transcripts so you can know that this is an episode that you want to dive straight into. Secondly, if you want a weekly roundup of the best e commerce case studies, tools and research, sign up to the High Five Friday newsletter which is delivered to inboxes at 8am every Friday morning. I read all the e commerce news and sending you the bits that I think you can take action from. Sign up at 12 high 12 h I g h.com au hi 5 and the last thing if you are looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, head over to esweettalent.com we are a dedicated e commerce talent agency connecting the best e commerce talent with the fastest growing brands. Check it out. Sign up to the email and get in touch with me if you want
Nathan Bush: to discuss your next move.
Nathan Bush: Until next time, thanks for listening and keep those customers adding to cartoon.
